oh posh
There were plenty of notable British inventions during the Victorian age. To name a few: Portland cement, the Christmas card, Sheffield steel, tarmac, inflatable bicycle tires, city police, The Tube, the Cornish Engine, the Pram (baby stroller), light-sensitive photographic paper, urban electric street lighting, the first public ‘penny’ flush toilets (shoe-shine included) and the first ceramic toilet bowl, the first rail tunnel under a major river (Thames). Also the theory of light as an electromagnetic wave, the discovery of Neptune, dinosaur hunters, the germ theory, the use of antiseptics and sterilized equipment, the use of ether and chloroform in hospitals, the first register of qualified doctors, the world’s first World Exhibition and Fair, and the world’s first jelly babies.
Fair enough and duly noted. For the record, I’m hardly disparaging creativeness at any level; simply asserting that modern achievement pales in comparison to the past.
Consider that in 330 BC:
* Euclid defined a point in a space and then a second point somewhere else in that space; separated horizontally.
* Next he defined an infinite number of points between the first two, creating a line.
* Next he defined points from the end points of the horizontal line, creating two vertical lines.
* Then he defined points horizontally from the end points of the vertical lines, creating a second horizontal line.
Now he had a rectangle or square, a 2-dimensional shape!
This definition can be extended, in space, to create a prism or cube, a 3-dimensional shape; and so on to include all the other geometric forms.
Euclid defined shape, the basis for structure, which we take for granted and w/o which we would likely still be living in caves. And just reflect a moment; he managed to achieve this w/o a college degree!!!
My starting point was direct and simple. We moderns preen w/the conceit that we are the greatest ever; which is bullshit way past the 10th power. Proof? Look at the world around us since the French Enlightenment.